Deon Meyer - Dead at Daybreak

Lord, not that as well.

He slowly blew out his breath, relaxed his shoulders, released the tension.

Slowly in. Slowly out. His heartbeat steadily decreased.

The first time had been sudden, five years ago now, it was winter, the clouds low, and he was in his car driving somewhere when his heart began beating at a furious rate, terrifyingly out of control, jerking and beating and galloping in his chest, and the clouds pressed down on him, faster and faster and faster, and he knew he was going to kick the bucket, heart attack, no heart could beat that fast. It was just after Nagel, just a month or so after Nagel, and he had driven on the N7 and he knew he was dying and he was scared and surprised because he wanted to die but not now, and his hands trembled and his whole body shook and he spoke out loud, babbled no, no, no, slowly, slowly, no, no, and forced his breath through his lips, noises, strange noises to slow everything down, and then slowly, systematically, it went away.

It happened again, on other days, every time with rain and low clouds, until fear drove him to a consulting room. “Panic attack. Is there anything in your life you want to discuss?”

“No.”

“I would like to refer you to a psychologist.” Pushing the white paper with the black ink across the table, caringly, that smooth, simulated, practiced caring that they could dish up for every patient when the occasion demanded. He had folded the white paper and put it in his pocket, and when he was outside he took it out, crumpled it, and threw it into the northwester, didn’t even see what happened to it, and the panic attacks came and went, and the knowledge, naming it, made it more controllable. Is there anything in your life you want to discuss?

And then it became less with the months that slipped by like embarrassed shadows, less and less until it no longer came, until now, and he knew why.

Theal.

It was going to bring it all back.

How many policemen had Colonel Willie Theal comforted with his endless supply of tact? Fuck, how had he, between his mother and Theal and all the other sympathetic eyes, managed to bottle it up? With difficulty, that was how, with difficulty, with so much effort and difficulty, but you got used to it, eventually you got used to it. He got up, made coffee. What was the matter with him this morning? It was almost six o’clock, a safe time, it was always such a safe time, it was being awake between two and three that was the dangerous time, the fighting time. It was because he had gone to bed sober the past two nights. Water in the kettle, coffee in the mug, strong, strong coffee, he could taste the full flavor already. Perhaps he should put on Don Giovanni – there was a fuck-you-all man, even in the descent into hell. He went looking for the CD, put it on, pressed the button, skipped the overture, Don Giovanni filled with bravado, on the way to his first murder, the smell of semen still clinging to him on his way to his first murder, his only murder, Mozart’s testosterone notes, his fuck-you-all notes. The water boiled, he poured it into the mug, stood in his kitchen and took tiny sips of the black, flavorful liquid, and saw the spaghetti – he needn’t cook tonight, he could eat leftovers.

He had seen his body this morning.

Kara-An Rousseau had invited him to dinner. This evening.

He had to see Willie Theal today and all the memories would be unlocked in his head.

Why did she want to invite him to dinner?

“I’m having a few people over.”

“No, thank you,” he had said.

“I knew it was short notice,” she had said in her creamy voice, disappointed. “But if you have something else on, come a bit later.” And gave an address, somewhere near the mountain.

What for?

He sat down in the chair again, put his bare feet on the coffee table, the mug against his chest, closed his eyes, the cold creeping in.

What for?

He listened to the music.

Perhaps he should phone the number.

No.

♦

Hope Beneke woke up and thought about Van Heerden – her very first thought was about Van Heerden.

It surprised her.

She swung her feet off the bed. The nightdress was warm and soft against her skin, against her body. She walked purposefully to the bathroom. She had a great deal to do. Saturdays…they had to be used.

♦

He phoned the number.

“The Voice of Love. Good morning.”

“Hallo,” he said.

“Hi, sweetie. What can Monique do for you? What is your pleasure? You want to talk dirty to me?”

“No.”

“You want me to talk dirty to you?”

“No.”

“Can I ask you to do things to me?”

“No.”

“Well, what do you want, sweetie?”

Silence.

“Come on, sweetie, the meter is running.”

“I want you to say something nice.”

“Oh, God, it’s you again.”

“Yes.”

“It’s been a while.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t do ‘nice,’ honey. I’ve told you before.”

“Yes.”

“Are you very lonely?”

“Yes.”

“Poor baby.”

“I have to go.”

“You always do, sweetie.”

He put down the telephone.

Poor baby .

∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧

16

Ieventually lost my virginity in the early summer of my senior year.

I don’t know how important these pieces are, should you want to piece together the jigsaw of my life. I didn’t develop an unquenchable passion for older women. But at least it was the beginning of Mozart and food and poetry and perhaps a general departure from the Louis L’Amour stage of my life. It was a start.

All I knew about poetry in those years was what they taught us in school. And as you can imagine, Betta Wandrag’s poetry wasn’t prescribed reading by the Education Department. Because so many of my mother’s friends were well known, I had no concrete awareness of her fame. In any case, it was only when she published her third volume of verse, Body Language , that the Sunday papers created such a furor. But by then I had finished my training at the Police College.

She was, at the time of the Great Event, somewhere in her late thirties, tall, her body no longer young, her hips broad, legs strong, her breasts ample, her hair long and thick and black and her eyes almost eastern, the corners downturned, her skin a dark, immaculate, faultless firmament. But it was only later that I stored these details in my memory bank, because for years she was just another weekend visitor from Johannesburg, another member of the adult circle of friends.

A Friday evening. In Stilfontein. When something was released. The collective sigh of relief of ten thousand miners was almost tangible, giving a certain atmosphere to the town, a sense of expectation, a total discharge of tension, an energy focused, deliberately, on the hard work of enjoying oneself.

My mother was in Cape Town and I was on the dark back veranda considering my dateless Friday evening. I just sat there, the way teenagers sometimes do, sat in a deck chair and stared at the dark, vaguely and uninterestedly aware of noises in the kitchen because Betta Wandrag, the visitor, was one of the people who, over weekends, balanced the scales of my mother’s lack of interest in the culinary arts. I can’t remember what the time was. It was dark, however. Somewhere, the deep bass boom of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” sounded on a radiogram, competing with Radio South Africa’s Concertina Club from another decibel-loaded direction. Most certainly there were the sounds of cars and insects, the exuberant appeal of young children playing cricket under the streetlights further down the road, a rubbish bin their wicket.

I just sat.